MASAI. The most important members of the Nilo-Hamitic group are the Masai, Nandi, Keyo, Suk, Turkana, Iteso, Kara mojong, Dodoth, Didinga, Topotha and Ajie. While they are, generally speaking, homogeneous the following distinctions have to be noted: 1. The Suk and the tribes to the south and east, the Masai, the Nandi and their neighbours, practise circumcision and clitoridectomy, while the tribes north of the Suk do not. 2. The Masai, Turkana and Ajie are nomadic; the Nandi, Keyo and Iteso are sedentary and have adopted agriculture in addition to the pastoral life; the rest are semi-nomadic.
The Masai are a tall, well-built, slender people with good features and well-defined noses. The two lower incisors are removed.
The heads of the women are shaved, as are the heads of married and of uninitiated men. The warriors wear their hair plaited into queues hanging down the back and over the forehead. The women are scrupu lously clothed from girlhood to old-age with dressed skins and leather petticoats. Beads, metal armlets, necklets and brace lets, are popular with both sexes.
Their dwellings are of a peculiar type, long, continuous houses (not more than 6ft. in height) which are built round the inside of a circular thorn fence.
They are flat roofed and are divided into separate compartments for families, each with a door. During their period of service the warriors, who may not yet marry, live in separate barracks or vil lages, where they are visited by the unmarried girls. The Masai keep cattle (of the humped Zebu type), sheep and goats, donkeys and dogs, and the cattle cult is a feature of their culture. Domestic animals are branded with the brand of their owner's clan. Women and old men eat flour and vegetables in addition to the milk, blood and meat which form the staple diet of the tribe. An intoxicating
honey mead is drunk by old men, and all except the warriors smoke tobacco and use snuff. Their weapons are spears (both broad- and narrow-bladed), clubs and a peculiar sword.
The Masai are divided into a number of patrilineal, exogamous clans grouped into four endogamous sections, and inheritance is normally to the eldest son who has to support his father's wives and his own brothers and sisters.
The system of initiation and age-grades (q.v.) is the basic feature of Masai social life and has produced a most effective military organization. The tribe is. divided into young men or boys and groups of ini tiated men who pass through successive stages as warriors and elders, differen tiated by duties, privileges and details of costume. The centre of political gravity is with the warrior class and there are no chiefs. The elders, whose ranks are replen ished by time-expired warriors, act as ad visers and with the tribal magician form the judicial and legislative authority, but the executive authority remains with the warriors. The magician (ol-oiboni), a hereditary office, is the chief adviser.
Religion is a mixture of ancestor-worship and the worship of Engai, the "sky." (Other members of the group have substi tuted different natural phenomena for Engai. The Nandi, for instance, worship Asis, the "sun": the Suk, Torotut, the "thunder": the Didinga, Tamukujen, the "rain.") The ancestor cult is associated with certain trees, notably the fig, and with a reverence for snakes, the python and cobra predominating. These are considered tutelary beings, and at marriage a man is careful to introduce his bride to his tutelary snake.